So I flew home to Minnesota on Saturday. I’m here till Sunday the 21st. Spring break woo show us yer tits!

But this comic isn’t just about spring break. Today I am going to share The News. (To which I alluded.)

I’m taking a gap year. I have deferred my enrollment at CCS. Technically, it’s not a deferment. They’re too competitive a program to promise a spot that far into the future, so instead, they will reevaluate my portfolio next year, possibly ask for additional materials, and then…we’ll see.

In the meantime, I will be living in Northfield with my folks, working a job or two, and devoting my spare time to comics.  We’re even moving my bedroom down to where my dad’s office was, so that we can all have a little more privacy. Some people might balk at the thought of moving back in with the folks. I’m not unfamiliar with that. Though I am eternally grateful for having the parents I have, the idea of moving back  home still makes me uneasy, and heightens all my usual fears about whether I will ever grow up/get a real job/find a cool dude to make out with.

I know that after all my gushing about CCS, this news may come as a surprise. How best to explain?

Part of me got a little weirded out by the high concentration of Hampshire grads who end up there. It’s sort of cool, but also sort of worrisome, given that at this point I am OH SO DONE with the Hampshire bubble. What if the students and professors there make me feel shitty about my work/personality in the way certain Hampshire students and professors have done??? Over the past few months, I have devoted many a sleepless night to this  (perhaps irrational) question.

Part of me just wants to come home. I love Minnesota.  You know this.   And I love the friends and family I have here. The Twin Cities are where I picture myself settling down and really doing things.  As long as I’m far away, there are all these important parts of my life that get put on hold.  I would never invest in, say, a nice scanner, or a drafting table, or a heavy stack of comic books, because I know it’ll just be a pain when I have to pack up and fly across the country.  I don’t like living that way.  Maybe after a year at home, I’ll be ready to fling myself to the winds again, but right now I’m just not feeling it.  And after giving Massachusetts four years of my life, I kinda hate the East Coast (though I probably just hate hipsters and self-righteous assholes).

But of course, above all, money money money. Right now, I simply can’t afford CCS. After a year of working and saving, that may change. Plus, I will apply for more grants and scholarships that I didn’t find out about this year until it was already too late.  I think I will also apply to the MFA programs at MCAD (it turns out that MCAD has a Comic Art MFA program??) and the U of M, just…to think about some other possibilities.

I still feel kind of down right now.  Especially since it looks like Goldfeather’s gonna make the leap to NYC.  She is pretty much the love of my life, and I feel sad that we couldn’t settle on a city that would keep us closer together.  But she’ll see me whenever she wants to visit home, and I’ll see her whenever I want to visit grand ol’ New York.  This means our paths will probably cross more often than if we’d picked, say, White River Junction and Asheville (those were our plans as of like two months ago).

Just in case you’re all thinking “Wow, this chick is a big scaredy cat loser,” let me direct you to a bunch of recent articles suggesting that, if I am a loser, I am at least part of a large loser trend: this New York Times article says grads are moving back home because they’re super picky about jobs, this USA Today article is called “Why Grown Kids Come Home,” this article says that 60% of grads move back home after graduation, while this article suggests it’s as high as 80%.

2 ½ months till Hampshire’s commencement ceremony. Whew.